Ah, Jo, these fill me with envy, for I finished a film that had been in the Leica since the end of May and finally got it developed - and I ended all disappointed. A film of cr**.

You did well here ... what brings about the toning of these as they are presented here? What kind of film was it? Black and white? And you toned it later? (If that is possible ... I don't even know that!)

I like that first abstract quite a bit ... is that a close up of some tyre??
I also like "Power" and wonder why the gradation from "in focus" towards "blurred" looks so ... sharp? Do you see what I mean: what is blurred still seems to have sharp edges around its being blurred. I wonder what brings that about?

Ah, Jo, these fill me with envy, for I finished a film that had been in the Leica since the end of May and finally got it developed - and I ended all disappointed. A film of cr**.

You did well here ... what brings about the toning of these as they are presented here? What kind of film was it? Black and white? And you toned it later? (If that is possible ... I don't even know that!)

I like that first abstract quite a bit ... is that a close up of some tyre??
I also like "Power" and wonder why the gradation from "in focus" towards "blurred" looks so ... sharp? Do you see what I mean: what is blurred still seems to have sharp edges around its being blurred. I wonder what brings that about?

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LaFoto,

First of all, don't feel too envious; out of 24 shots, these 5 were the best

Yea, this was shot on kodak B/W. I don't know what kind, I just went to CVS and bought whatever B/W they had. (CVS is just a local drug/misc. store.) I got them developed there as well, and put onto CD-ROM. After getting home, I started playing with them in photoshop. All I did was play with the contrast and brightness. 3, 4, and 5 also have a 25% filter added (I can't remember what colors though--5 was yellow, I remember that).

You guessed correctly, the tread of a tire on a boat trailer that I took when walking through a marina in Annapolis. I'm not quite sure how the sharpness of the blurr happened. There's definitely some DOF going on, and I boosted the contrast pretty high, so I think it's just the highs and lows and the boosted contrast doing it. I can post the original if you would like.

I also like "Power" and wonder why the gradation from "in focus" towards "blurred" looks so ... sharp? Do you see what I mean: what is blurred still seems to have sharp edges around its being blurred. I wonder what brings that about?

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You answer is in jocose's post.

jocose said:

Yea, this was shot on kodak B/W. I don't know what kind, I just went to CVS and bought whatever B/W they had. (CVS is just a local drug/misc. store.) I got them developed there as well...

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CVS (nor WalMart, Walgreens, or Rite-Aid) does not develop black and white film in the traditional sense. The Kodak film you bought is called B&W. It isn't really a black and white film. Well, it is, and it isn't. It is processed in the same c41 processing that they do for their color film. That Kodak film is made so it can be done in that process. The neg isn't silver, it is a dye. Put that neg in an enlarger, and look at the grain. It is super super fine. My girlfriend had one of these that we decided to blow up. At 8x10, the grain was very very fine, but still easy to see. At 11x14, it was nearly gone. There was about 1/64" of play in the wheel on the enlarger where you could actually see grain. When we boosted it to 16x20, it took us half an hour just to focus the image on the enlarger because the grain was so fine it couldn't be picked up by any of the grain focusers we had on hand. We needed something much more powerful to magnify the grain. It wasn't that the grain was getting smaller as it got larger, we know that isn't possible, but the window of "in focus" was so small, and the grain was tiny tiny tiny to begin with that it was difficult to deal with on the larger scales...

The plus side of this is that you can blow those photos into poster size prints and still have a crisp shot with little to no grain.

CVS (nor WalMart, Walgreens, or Rite-Aid) does not develop black and white film in the traditional sense. The Kodak film you bought is called B&W. It isn't really a black and white film. Well, it is, and it isn't. It is processed in the same c41 processing that they do for their color film. That Kodak film is made so it can be done in that process. The neg isn't silver, it is a dye. Put that neg in an enlarger, and look at the grain. It is super super fine. My girlfriend had one of these that we decided to blow up. At 8x10, the grain was very very fine, but still easy to see. At 11x14, it was nearly gone. There was about 1/64" of play in the wheel on the enlarger where you could actually see grain. When we boosted it to 16x20, it took us half an hour just to focus the image on the enlarger because the grain was so fine it couldn't be picked up by any of the grain focusers we had on hand. We needed something much more powerful to magnify the grain. It wasn't that the grain was getting smaller as it got larger, we know that isn't possible, but the window of "in focus" was so small, and the grain was tiny tiny tiny to begin with that it was difficult to deal with on the larger scales...

The plus side of this is that you can blow those photos into poster size prints and still have a crisp shot with little to no grain.

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OK, so not understanding any of this, except that there is grain, is this good or bad??

Grain is neither good nor bad. It all depends on how you print and the effect for which you're looking.

A large grain give you a grainy print. Fine grain give you a more crisp look. the larger you print, the larger the grain. The finer the grain, the larger you can print before the grain becomes apparent.

Grain is neither good nor bad. It all depends on how you print and the effect for which you're looking.

A large grain give you a grainy print. Fine grain give you a more crisp look. the larger you print, the larger the grain. The finer the grain, the larger you can print before the grain becomes apparent.

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so then you're saying that CVS's process is good if I want to blow up one of these suckers and stick it on the wall?

Actually, my sister is looking for art for her house, and I keep trying to convince her to use my pics...if she agrees, I should get CVS to print them then, eh?

so then you're saying that CVS's process is good if I want to blow up one of these suckers and stick it on the wall?

Actually, my sister is looking for art for her house, and I keep trying to convince her to use my pics...if she agrees, I should get CVS to print them then, eh?

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Super fine grain the the result of the C41 processing on the Kodak B&W film. CVS' processing is probably hit and miss from store to store.

If you want very large print, I would probably have them digitized (put on CD) and have snapfish.com make the print (unless you have the capability to do it yourself). I myself do not have a darkroom, but I have access to one at the college due to the fact that I am taking phto classes there.